#65 New Authors: Dead Until Dark

Ugh, what is it with these female characters? I wanted to like Sookie Stackhouse, I really did... it seemed there was a lot to like. And she did end up growing on me by book 5. But mostly she comes off as so callous and cold, just like a lot of the other characters, every time someone dies.  Her grandmother is murdered and she's like, well, guess I'll move into her room cuz it's bigger and has a nicer bathroom. Excuse me, what? I don't care if this is a week after the funeral, shouldn't there be more of a mourning period? Shouldn't it at least be hard for her to move her grandmother's stuff out? Like, come ON.

Same thing happens when a co-worker dies. Sookie's all, oh it's horrible... God we'll have to get someone to cover her shift.

In the beginning of the second book she actually kind of makes jokes about the dead body of another co-worker, less than an hour after finding it. Are you freaking kidding me?

Despite this, the plot line is interesting enough that I kept reading and I liked most of the other characters. And eventually Sookie did stop pissing me off so much. Or maybe I just got used to the fact that she's completely unrealistic when it comes to deaths. Oi. Would I recommend these as some of my favorite books? No. But they do have a certain appeal and once I got over those moments with Sookie I really enjoyed them.  If someone was interested, I'd warn them that they might not like Sookie at first, but that she gets better.  I'm eagerly awaiting the next one because I want to know what's going to happen next in her story.

#68 Museums I've Never Been To: Madame Tussaud's

Not like I didn't already suspect this, but now it's confirmed: wax museums = uber creepy.

But still pretty cool.  Seeing Morgan Freeman scare the crap out of my husband was worth every wax figure that scared the crap out of me. It's weird to be walking around, apologize for almost running into someone, and then turn to find that you've just apologized to a wax figurine.  And then you feel like an idiot.

The museum wasn't quite as big as I was expecting, to be honest, although it did have a lot of stars within it, for some reason I was expecting more.

Considering the size of it, I was glad that I got our tickets off of a LivingSocial deal and that we didn't pay full price. But we had a good time. Took us about an hour to run through the whole museum, despite my penchant for taking constant pictures. =)

#97 New Restaurants: Cesco Osteria

Holy noms!

I love this place.  It's got good food, great atmosphere, and is actually worth dressing up to go to, even the bar. Perhaps especially the bar.  At first I thought I would be sad that McCormick and Schmick's was gone, they had such a good happy hour, but I'm SO happy that there's finally a restaurant with an upscale bar in Bethesda! So many of them seem to be downsliding.

The food is fantastic. Good gourmet Italian. Everything is fresh made, even the pasta, which makes such a huge difference. The price point is about the same as other Bethesda restaurants.  And it's friendly. I've seen both the owner and the chef walking around, introducing themselves to people and asking how their experience has been. So not only do you get the feeling of a classy joint, you get the feeling of a friendly place that cares.

My ridiculously yummy steak dinner:

In the bar you can get Happy Hour, prices are a little higher than other places in Bethesda, but this is a good thing.  Keeps out the riff raff for one ;) LOL. By which I mean, most of the people at the bar are dressed up, some came straight from work but a lot seem to have gone home and dressed up a little before going out. Isn't that awesome?

The food selection is huge and they bring out some pretty darn large portions, so that you don't mind the slightly higher food prices than usual for happy hour. See the giant calzone below. NOM.

If you stick around till 8pm or so then the live music starts.  And people dance. They don't bump and grind, they don't wiggle their hips - they DANCE.

God I love this place.

#70 AFI's Top 100 Movie List: #100 Yankee Doodle Dandy

Seeing as it's #100 on the AFI's Top 100 Movie List and it's an old time musical (which I usually don't particularly like), I was not expecting this movie to be that good. Once again, AFI didn't let me down.

I loved it.

It's not a musical like I was expecting. There is no transition from plot line to song. Instead it's a biographical movie about George M. Cohan, a man who wrote and stared in so many musicals that he became known as "The Man Who Owned Broadway."  The music and dance numbers are all his music and dance numbers, done as close to the original play versions as possible, and all are set on stage or in rehearsal spaces.  It's like getting a little bit of live theater, but in a movie.

The story was fantastic. It was fun to see the hot headed and talented young boy start to realize that talent isn't everything and a bad attitude will mean black listing, and then begin to turn his life around.  He's a good guy at heart, even though at first you want to wallop him for being a self-centered little idiot. By the end of the movie I was a big fan of both him and the movie.

#79 Four Seasons: Spring

Part of my ongoing attempt to capture pictures of myself with the same landscape during all four seasons...

These are May's pictures

#65: New Authors: Fifty Shades of Grey

Yeah I read it. All three of them actually.  I'd never read anything by E.L. James before and I'm not sure I ever will again.  Her writing style is pretty good, she's great at sucking you into a book where you hate the characters but just HAVE to find out what's going to happen with them.

What's frightening to me is just how unrealistically dangerous her characters are. She has admitted that she knew nothing about BDSM, and it's pretty obvious. Not only is her Dom an unstable, out of control, unsafe Dom, but her virginal and inexperienced heroine is immediately having mind blowing orgasms from his incredible technique. Oh, and he's a billionaire who's fallen head over heels in love with her, so much so that he's able to move past years of trauma just from her presence. Yeah right. Talk about setting real people up for major failure. There are definitely guys out there who can be unstable, out of control and unsafe control freaks, but any virgin who's going into sex expecting mind blowing orgasms right from the getgo is going to be seriously disappointed.  And no girl is going to be able to "heal" a man like that.

It's terrifying to me how many young women think that it's super romantic for characters like Edward and Christian Grey to exhibit stalker behavior.  And Mr. Grey takes it to some technological extremes.

This book is great fantasy. It's a fun read. But don't take it seriously. Christian Grey is a terrible Dom. He has absolutely no self control and he exhibits abusive tendencies. Which, to give her credit, Ana does fight against. And to give him credit, he's in therapy. So there are some good things there.

But please... don't think that the majority of this book is in any possible in real life. You're just setting yourself up for massive disappointment and a life of loneliness because you will never measure up to Ana and no man is as sweetly and innocently emotionally abusive and determined to change as Christian Grey.